1. Field of Invention
Printing of documents and more specifically to systems and methods for embedding metadata into print jobs.
2. Description of Related Art
Printing of both fixed data and variable data is often required with printing applications. The phrase “fixed data,” as used herein, may refer to data that remains constant over a plurality of documents in a project. A project may refer to one or more documents having the same fixed data. The phrase “variable information or data,” as used herein, may refer to information or data that varies between documents in a project. A document may refer to one or more pages in a project corresponding to a set or record of variable data. Projects containing both fixed and variable data may include data for personalized direct mailing documents, business forms, custom calendars, personalized checks, and the like. A sample set is each unique document contained within the print job. The sample set allows a printing system to digest a stream of documents and know where each documents starts and stops within the data stream.
Technological advancements in the speed, cost, and quality of digital production color equipment are driving the evolution of variable information printing. Today, full-color variable information printing represents a modest portion of the full-color impressions produced on digital production equipment, but its potential for growth is enormous. Variable information print jobs may produce a large group of similar documents, each documents containing custom content interspersed with repeated, static information. The pages of the print job may be composed of text, graphics, and images that can be unique to just that copy, identical on every copy, or used on some copies of the document but not on others.
Variable information applications can be demanding. They can call upon a full range of resources and may require careful coordination between the printer, designer, and client. Variable information printing also adds the critical dimension of data management, which is a key differentiating requirement from static applications. The content of variable information jobs, however, can vary from document to document and from page to page, severely burdening the controller. Full-color variable information applications further compound this challenge since they contain massive quantities of data for the controller to process and transfer to the printer.
If one of the sample sets is damaged during production, it is difficult and sometimes impossible to recreate the damaged sample set without reprinting the entire project. Thus, the recovery process may require generating a new variable information job containing the lost sample set. Generating a new variable information job in conventional imaging systems may be the only option available when the sample set is damaged because the conventional systems cannot determine which pages of the original job correspond to the lost sample set in order to only print the damaged pages of the original print job.
Because of the complexity of variable information print jobs, damaged sample sets may improperly alter the final product. Thus, there is a need to determine which pages of the original job correspond to a damaged or lost sample set in order to only print those pages of the original print job instead of generating the entire variable information job. Furthermore, there is also a need for improved efficiency and speed with variable information print jobs, while maintaining high quality print jobs.